British prosecutors are currently hammering home how Drummer Lee Rigby, a solider, was carved up on a south-east London street by homeboys Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22. I believe I am correct when I say that 30 years is the longest this detritus is likely to remain in a British prison. In progressive Britain there is only paltry prison time for such a premeditated, public execution. What is termed “a whole life order” is seldom meted out.

A “whole-life order” may be meted out for multiple murder, murder of a child as well as to repeat offenders. I believe the two butchers do not quality, not that this zero-information, TIME-magazine report has touched on sentencing.

In England and Wales [where capital punishment was suspended in 1965] life imprisonment is a sentence which lasts until the death of the prisoner, although in most cases the prisoner will be eligible for parole (officially termed “early release”) after a fixed period set by the judge. This period is known as the “minimum term” (previously known as the “tariff”). In some exceptionally grave cases however, a judge may order that a life sentence should mean life by making a “whole life order.” There is currently no “first degree” or “second degree” murder definition.

A “frenzied machete attack.” “The most appalling crime.” “Sickening.” “Barbaric.” “A deluded, deranged act of violence.” “Gruesome and shocking.” These were press-cited descriptions of the butchering of a British soldier by a black man with a meat-cleaver, on a south-east London street.
By the sound of the killer’s common vernacular and accent, he, too, was British. The slaying occurred in Woolwich, just yards from the Royal Artillery Barracks.
Not content with carving up his countryman on the pavement, the savage also managed to carve out for himself a Speakers’ Corner, away from the famous, and once so civilized, corner in Hyde Park. Slick with the blood of his victim—and befitting the YouTube era—the killer then asked a passerby to film his splenetic screed. The result was a mini-manifesto, delivered to the world, as the still-warm body of the grunt loomed in the background.
The butchered soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby, was reported to have been wearing a “Help for Heroes” T-Shirt, the equivalent of America’s “Wounded Warrior” project. Same wars, waged by the same politicians, to the detriment of the same people at home and abroad.
Before finishing him off on foot, his assailants had run Drummer Rigby over by car. Since this occurred in barbaric Britannia, where a man’s right to life is purely nominal or theoretical, the victim was defenseless.